


Egg Baby

by theelusiveflamingo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, F/M, Jaqen is not a high school student, This took a strange turn, Underage But Whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 04:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2375069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theelusiveflamingo/pseuds/theelusiveflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya hates the fake baby project she has to do for high school health class.  She asks her strange boyfriend who claims to be an assassin for some help getting out of the assignment.</p><p>Jaqen takes his jobs seriously.</p><p>Inspired by a post on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Egg Baby

“…And I don’t even _want_ kids.”  Arya paused in the middle of her rant and reached for Jaqen’s pack of Camels that was lying on the table, to see if he’d give her a lecture.  But he didn’t even blink, and anyway the water had started to boil behind them.  He got up from the table to get the coffee ready.  Arya took a breath and kept talking.

“I have little brothers, I know how bad it is.  You can’t _go_ anywhere with kids or _do_ anything without bringing a thousand diapers along, you know?”

“A man has heard.”  The tiny apartment now smelled like shitty instant coffee.  It had turned into one of Arya’s favorite smells somehow.  She hadn’t told her brain to be stupid like that.  Her brain did it anyway.  She flicked the heavy lighter with the featureless face on it and lit the Camel on her first try.

“I know Sansa’s going to have a billion kids.  I’d be cool with being their aunt.  I would read them the fucked-up German fairytales.  You know that in the real Cinderella the stepsisters chop their heels off to fit in the glass slipper?”

“A girl has read these?”  Jaqen put a cracked mug of coffee in front of her, slipped the cigarette from her mouth and took a drag.  She glared at him.  “A girl’s mother seems…”

“ _She_ didn’t read them to me.  Ugh, this sucks.”  She worked another Camel out of the pack and reached for the lighter again, but Jaqen was still quicker than her most of the time, and he caught it between his long fingers.

“Ugh, _you_ suck.”                                                                         

“A man insists, lovely girl.”  He flicked the lighter and held the flame out to her.  She rolled her eyes but let him light her cigarette.  It was better that way, somehow.

“I don’t want to have to practice being a mom,” she said around the hot, dry feeling of smoke in her mouth.  “High school sucks.  I wanna drop out and work with you.  I’m old enough.”

“A man has said this before.”  Jaqen reached out and stroked Arya’s jaw, then her cheek, then the bristly hair of her freshly-shaved undercut.  His pale eyes were bright.  His words were _fucking annoying_.  “A girl must finish school.  Then a man and a girl will talk.  If a girl cannot handle two more years of high school, how will she do this work, hmm?”

Arya growled and bit his hand.  He barely flinched; only sliding his thumb along her lower lip in response. Her lips were all torn up from biting at them in anger on the bus over here, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who cared about that, and Jaqen wasn’t the kind of guy who cared.

“Did they make you do this kind of stuff in high school?  Did you have a baby egg Jaqen and paint half its shell red?”  Did Jaqen even _go_ to high school?  Arya couldn’t really imagine him as a stupid high-school boy with braces and scrawny shoulders and zits instead of a pretty face.

“A man does not think of his past,” Jaqen said, “though if a lovely girl were to be his partner in this thing, perhaps he would not mind it so much.”

“Ew, shut up!” Arya punched him in the arm.  “I’m not having your fake babies _or_ your real babies.”

“A girl has punched a man.”  He blew smoke in her face and took a sip of the instant coffee.  “A man has said nothing to deserve this.  Lovely girl, a man wishes he could help.”

Arya stubbed out her Camel on the side of her coffee mug, propped her booted feet on Jaqen’s lap and glanced at the wall clock.  She still had an hour before Mom would start worrying.  The last time Arya had gotten home late from “studying with Wylla Manderly,” Mom had thrown a shitfit.  It was all because Wylla had green hair, Arya knew it. If she’d said she was with Beth Cassel, Mom probably would have been happy Arya was studying.

Well, an hour was enough time to forget about the stupid project, even for a bit.  She whipped her shirt off and tossed it on the floor.  Her nipples were hard through her old grey bra from her shirt brushing over them. 

“I’m bored,” she said.  “Let’s go do something, I don’t wanna talk about this project anymore.”

“ _Lovely girl_.” Jaqen looked pained.  “A man is trying to _think_.  A girl makes it difficult.”

“Think _later_ ,” Arya said.  “I only have an hour.”

“A man can think and still have time left in an hour,” he said.  “But a man wants to help a girl, so a man must think now.”

This was the _thing_ about old guys, Arya thought as she took a sip of coffee to warm up.  Now that her shirt was on the floor, her skin was prickling with goosebumps.  Everyone acted like all old guys were perverts who wanted to fuck 24/7.  But Jaqen never let himself get distracted (unless, she’d realized, he _wanted_ to be.)  Maybe he wasn’t old enough to be a real perv.  Well, it was probably better this way.

“Jaqen,” she said, her heart feeling a little quivery even though she really wished it didn’t.  “Please?”

Jaqen shook his head slowly, but then smiled and held out his arms.  Arya climbed into his lap and tugged at the hem of his shirt.  He lifted his arms so she could pull it off easily.  She reached behind him and into the jacket he had hung over the back of the chair, pulling out the knife he kept in there.  He kissed her scalp and the tops of her ears over and over again, cupping the side of her head in one hand, as she ran the knife lightly down his bare chest, drawing just the tiniest bit of blood along the way.  He breathed heavy against her as she did this, and the way he inhaled sharply as she pricked his skin and then let his breath back out in little shudders made Arya feel she was well on her way to forgetting about eggs.

“Do you do this thing every day, lovely girl?”  His hands danced up her back and lingered at the clasp of her bra.  She understood and nodded her head slightly.  He unclasped it.  She let the knife drop to the floor.

“What thing?”

“This game of eggs and babies.”

“Oh.  Yeah.”  She straddled his hips with her knees and rocked softly against him as he took her breasts in his hands and kissed them so softly, so slowly.  She tried to speak, but a little whine came out before she could manage words.  “Every day we have to…”

“A man has thought.”  His voice was muffled, his breath warm against her skin.  He moved one of his hands, using it to take hers and place it on his flat, warm stomach.  He was so polite, giving her hints instead of barking orders at her, she thought as she slid her palm downwards.  Someone like Sansa’s Joffrey would never do that.

“A man has thought?”

“And a man will help you.”

“You’re the best,” Arya breathed, and she yanked his zipper down so fiercely she felt him stifle a laugh before he kissed his way up to her mouth and let his cigarettes-and-coffee breath mix with her own.  Well, so what if she was eager and not patient enough?  He’d forget about it in a second, anyway.

*

Six days had passed since Jaqen had told her _a man has thought_ and Arya was pretty sure _a man_ was full of shit.  She’d heard him talk about what he could do, and she’d seen the scars on his torso and his collection of weapons, but maybe…He _seemed_ like he could be a real dangerous killer, between the way he talked and the swift, smooth way he moved and the fact that he didn’t seem to have a past _at all_ , but he could always just be a delusional creep living in a crazy fantasy world.  Maybe his name was actually Jack Waters or something and he was an accountant with an ugly wife and two ugly kids who only wanted to watch TV and this was his fantasy life that he’d lured _her_ into.  It didn’t help that Jaqen hadn’t invited her over once in those six days, and his responses to her texts had been even more brief and _cryptic_ than usual.

And the worst part of it, she thought as she took out her earrings in front of her mirror, was that she had health class again tomorrow, and the Egg Problem wasn’t solved.  She’d have to sit next to Colmar Frey and pretend the kid was theirs, and Ms. Hightower would complain about how her journal entries about the egg baby’s progress weren’t good enough.

Arya stared at herself in the mirror and felt her annoyance turn to hard, hot rage as she realized what she was wearing.  Jaqen had given her an old white shirt once; she slept in it and it was soft and comfortable and huge on her and even had a rusty brown bloodstain on it ( _A girl wants a man’s blood on her,_ he’d said, amused, and she’d smiled and shot him back an _Always_ ) and suddenly she hated the sight of it because he had _betrayed her_.

She pulled off the shirt, wadded it up and hurled the ball of fabric under her dresser.

 _There,_ she thought, and threw herself into bed.  _I don’t need you anyway.  I’ll figure something out_.

But by the time health class came around the next day, Arya was full of the same despair she’d felt last night.  She hadn’t figured anything out at all.  She was going to have to keep doing the egg project and pretending she’d had a kid with _Colmar Frey_.  As if a Stark would ever have sex with a Frey.  It was disgusting.

“Please take out your journals,” Ms. Hightower droned from the front of the class.  “While I come around and collect them, you and your partner will—”

Arya would never forget the sound of the teacher’s body dropping and hitting her desk.  It was a loud, solid sound that set her heart pounding in her chest.

“Ms. Hightower?  Ms. Hightower?”

Wylla Manderly came up to the front of the class to poke her.  “I don’t think she’s breathing!”

A chorus of _holy shits_ erupted around Arya as she sat there, stunned.  Ms. Hightower hadn’t been young, exactly, but she still seemed too young to collapse like that.

“I think she’s dead!” Wylla yelled.  “Someone pass me my phone.”

Devan Seaworth ran to get the principal.  Wylla got on the phone to get an ambulance.  Colmar Frey started a soft chant of _ding-dong, the bitch is dead!_ til Arya glared at him.

Was this what she’d wanted?  Was this how it _worked?_

In the total chaos of Principal Karstark barging into the classroom, Arya nearly missed the text, but no, she thought as she pulled her phone out of her pocket, she hadn’t made it up.  Jaqen had finally texted her.

 _A lovely girl has a good afternoon_.

Was it a question?  A statement?  Arya never knew with Jaqen.  She sent him back an _??? I dunno_ and left it at that, watching as a team of paramedics stepped into the room and started checking for a pulse.

*

Pulp Fiction was on, and they were supposed to be watching it _together_ , even though she’d seen it a million times with Robb and Jon and Theon, but Jaqen’s eyes kept drooping shut.  Arya thought he might have fallen asleep.  She shifted on top of him, elbowing him in the ribs on purpose, but nothing happened.  She pulled on the white half of his hair.

His blue eyes cracked open.

“Stop falling asleep,” Arya complained.

“A man is sorry, lovely girl.”  He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her tighter against his bare chest.  “A man goes without sleep for many nights to do his latest job.”

“So why’d you tell me to come over?”

“A girl is confused about what happened.  A man understands.  A man was once…”  He started stroking her hair. 

“It was just _weird_.  I didn’t know you were going to kill her.”  She shook his hand off and took his jaw in her hands and leaned into his face, her bare thighs now flush against the scratchiness of the hair on his thighs.  “Aren’t you only supposed to kill the ones your boss guy tells you to kill?  Are you gonna get in trouble?”

“A man will pay the price, yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It is not for a girl to know.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

He pulled them up into a sitting position, turning Arya so her back was pressing tight against his smooth chest.  They were a similar shade of creepy pale, but his legs were so much longer than hers.  It was weird, Arya thought, all the details she noticed even though there was something big on her mind.

“A girl should never worry about a man,” he whispered in her ear.  The heat of his breath on her ear and the sensitive skin on her neck made her suddenly wet, which she knew he’d feel because she was sitting _right there on his bare thigh_ , but something about Jaqen never made her feel embarrassed, _ever._ “A man has seen things.  A man has done things.  A man takes care of himself, and his side-job will not get him in too much trouble in the end.”

“You killed my health teacher.”

“A man gives the gods a gift,” Jaqen snotted.  Maybe if he told her exactly how what he did worked, Arya thought, he wouldn’t have to get pissy about her _not getting it_ all the time.  “A man does not just do some careless thing.  To die is an honor.”

“Am I, like…an accessory to murder or something?”

Jaqen sighed and rested his head on top of hers.

“A girl is not an _accessory_.  A girl is ready to learn.  To understand, a man thinks.”

Arya jumped up and turned around so she was staring Jaqen right in the eye.  “I am?”

“It might help a girl understand what a man has done.  Is she ready?”                          

Arya nodded, grabbing his hands and lacing her fingers through his.  “She’s ready.  _I’m ready._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> This thing has been sitting nearly-completed for almost two months. It's actually the first AxJ I started writing. Here it is, for better or for worse!


End file.
